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School told to take CCTV out of student toilets

A SECONDARY school in Co Kildare was ordered to remove monitoring cameras from student toilets after their parents made a complaint to the Data Protection Commissioner.

The case is outlined in the commissioner’s annual report for 2010, published yesterday. Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes said the use of CCTV continued to give rise to regular complaints.

Cameras were installed in the students’ toilets and the students “objected to this intrusiveness”, his report said. “When their concerns were dismissed, they walked out of the school in protest.”

As the cameras were operating in contravention of the Data Protection Acts, the commissioner ordered their immediate removal.

The commissioner said schools must provide a “convincing justification for the use of every camera in and around its premises”.

He said cameras were not a substitute for supervision “and they should not be used for that purpose”.

It said complaints about CCTV were not confined to students and that staff had also complained about the use of CCTV to monitor their movements, which was “rarely proportionate” under the Data Protection Acts.